5 claims Trump used to justify pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement — and the reality

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced his decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord, arguing the deal would have led to an insignificant global temperature drop.

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Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

On
Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he would
begin pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate
change. The accord, signed by all but two countries, aims to
keep the world from warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius above
preindustrial levels, a threshold that scientists say could save
the planet from the worst-case scenarios of climate change.

During a White House news conference, Trump outlined his reasons
for leaving the agreement. Many of them, however, were based on
questionable data. Here are some of Trump's main arguments for
exiting the pact - and what the numbers say about them.

Job losses

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Justin Merriman/Getty

Trump suggested that US compliance with the Paris accord could
"cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according
to the National Economic Research Associates."

The report on which that claim is based has been widely
criticized by environmental groups. As the World Resources
Institute pointed out, the NERA study uses a scenario in which
the US industrial sector is forced to reduce the country's
overall emissions by nearly 40% in 20 years. That calculation
doesn't take into account the role of other sectors in reducing
emissions.

The WRI also faults the NERA report for assuming a low rate of
clean-energy innovation. That rate was calculated by the
Department of Energy as a minimal case that "may underestimate
advances." What's more likely, the National Resources
Defense Council suggests, is that the development of clean
energy technologies will accelerate. Even since 2016, solar costs
have decreased by about 8%.

Just a tiny temperature decrease

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The 2015 Arctic sea ice summertime minimum was 699,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average, shown here as a gold line in this visual representation of a NASA analysis of satellite data released September 14, 2015.

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NASA via Reuters

Trump also suggested that the Paris Agreement would lead to only
a minuscule reduction in global temperature.

"Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total
compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only
produce a two-tenths of one degree - think of that, this much -
Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100," he
said. "Tiny, tiny amount."

The global temperature will rise - there is no scenario in which
there will be an overall reduction. But let's assume that Trump
meant a reduction from the projections of temperature increases
that would happen without the Paris Agreement.

Under a "business as usual" scenario in which past trends
continue, the expected temperature increase in 2100 is 4.2
degrees Celsius (7.6 degrees Fahrenheit). If all nations fully
achieve their Paris pledges, however, the average global surface
temperature in 2100 is expected to be 3.3 degrees. That means the
accord would lead to a reduction of nine-tenths of one degree,
not two.

Nine-tenths of a degree on a global scale is huge. Since the
industrial revolution, global temperatures on average have risen
0.99
degrees Celsius, according to NASA. That's not so far from
.90, and we're already seeing plenty of
dramatic changes around the planet. Even a reduction of
two-tenths of a degree would not be "tiny" - it would be 20% of
the increase we've already seen.

Trump went on: "In fact," he said, "14 days of carbon emissions
from China alone would wipe out the gains from America - and this
is an incredible statistic - would totally wipe out the gains
from America's expected reductions in the year 2030."

That claim also does not appear to be accurate. With the US
abandoning its commitments, Climate Interactive calculates that
by 2025, the country would emit 6.7 gigatons of CO2 a year
instead of the 5.3 gigatons of CO2 a year that the US would emit
under the agreement.

As of 2013, China emitted 9.2 gigatons of carbon
dioxide a year - which comes out to 0.025 gigatons a day.
Fourteen days' worth would be 0.35 gigatons - far less than the
annual US decrease.

A negative economic impact on the US

In his speech, Trump suggested that remaining in the agreement
would cost the US economy "close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and
6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000
less income, and in many cases, much worse than that."

Trump didn't cite a source for that statistic, but he suggested
in a speech on April 29 that the cost would be $2.5 trillion -
and the nonpartisan website Factcheck.org looked into that
claim.

Factcheck.org ran Heritage's analysis by Roberton C. Williams
III, a resource economist at the University of Maryland who is a
senior fellow at the economic-analysis nonprofit Resources for the Future. Williams said
the Heritage estimate was correct based on the methodology the
foundation used - the analysts estimated a carbon tax rate of
$36, which would increase by 3% each year from 2015 to 2035. With
those numbers, the US gross domestic product would take a hit of
0.55% annually through 2035.

But according to calculations done by Resources of the Future,
the US could reach its Paris goals with a much lower carbon tax
rate over less time (either a constant rate of $21.22 a year
until 2025 or a rate that starts at $16.87 and increases by 3%
each year in the same period). By those numbers, the US GDP would
be negatively affected by about 0.10% to 0.35% a year from now
until 2025.

Blackouts and brownouts

By adhering to the goals set in the Paris accord, Trump said,
"our country will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts."
The statement seems to imply that the US needs to use whichever
energy sources it can (namely fossil fuels) to keep up with
demand for electricity.

The root cause is when excess heat - both from heavy electrical
loads and a heat wave itself - overburdens, melts, or otherwise
damages equipment like electrical transformers and power lines.

Trump also downplayed the significance of rising global
temperatures, which is likely to increase overall demand to power
grids through increased use of air conditioning. His
administration initially froze new energy-efficiency standards
from going into effect, which would have exacerbated demand,
though it later reversed course (after a coalition of US states
sued the administration).

"Billions and billions and billions of dollars"

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Reuters/Amit Dave

In addition to the impacts Trump suggested the Paris Agreement
would have on the US economy, he also suggested that
participation would require the US to pay a significant sum to
the Green Climate Fund that was set up by the accord.

"So we're going to be paying billions and billions and billions
of dollars and we're already way ahead of anybody else," he said.
"Many of the other countries haven't spent anything. And many of
them will never pay one dime."

The US committed to contribute $3 billion to the fund. That
number is indeed higher than any other
country, so Trump's statement here isn't entirely wrong.

But the US is also responsible for
approximately one-third of the carbon dioxide that has been
emitted, which makes the fact that the country is pledging a
larger sum of money a bit more logical. Plus, the US contribution
is far from the largest per capita - Luxembourg pledged to pay
$93.60 per capita, and Sweden pledged $60.54 per capita, compared
with $9.30 per capita from the US.

The US already gave $1 billion of its pledged amount. In his
speech, Trump promised that withdrawing from the agreement would
mean the US wouldn't put any more money into the fund.